Police detained three brothers from one family after busting a major telephone fraud gang in an operation in the Dianbai district of Maoming city in western Guangdong province last month.

According to Chen Ke, deputy mayor of Maoming, the brother, surnamed Shao, were found to be key members of a gang that used to be active in the southern Chinese region that borders the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

"The Shao brothers used to be responsible for withdrawing defrauded money, offering bank cards and phoning victims to defraud," said Chen who is also director of the Maoming city bureau of public security.

The brothers were just three of 42 suspects detained in the early morning of April 15, Chen told a press conference on Monday.

"The gang was investigated and found to have committed 45 telephone fraud cases involving more than 800,000 yuan ($129,032) in past months, while victims have mainly come from Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Sichuan and Jilin provinces and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region," Chen said.

"The crackdown has dealt a heavy blow to local telephone fraud events". Further special operations will be launched in the coming months despite the achievement, he added.

Long Muxing, deputy magistrate of Maoming's Dianbai district and director of the district's bureau of public security, attributed the growing number of telephone fraud cases in his district to locals' poor legal awareness.

"Many local people want to become rich in a very short period and take risks to participate in telephone frauds," Long said.

"Some young people have learned from the bad examples set by others who have built houses in their towns and villages after defrauding large sums of money from telephone frauds".

Long urged locals and victims of telephone frauds to tip off police.

Maoming police have detained more than 200 suspects of involvement in telephone and bank card fraud cases between April last year and last month in a year-long campaign against telephone fraud, showing a year-on-year increase of 112.77 percent.